NaNo Tip: Write When You Can

As a college student participating in NaNoWriMo, this tip is twice as important for me. You'd be surprised where you can pound out a couple hundreds words.

I write...
- To give myself a break between study sessions
- At meals if I'm eating alone
- While I'm waiting for class to start
- During class (highly not recommended)
- During commercial breaks for my favorite shows
- When my homework is done in the evenings
- During the weekends

Take a look at your day and if there is any time when you have a few extra minutes in writing-distance to a laptop or notebook, take that as an opportunity to write a bit. All those little bits and pieces will add up quickly and soon you'll be well on your way to 50,000 words.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Just Write It

I hear a lot of questions from writers asking other people if they think something would work. A point of view. A tense. A story idea. A style of writing. A plot point. My answer is always the same. "Write the book the way it wants to be written. If it works, it works." Because, honestly, NO ONE can tell you if something is going to work or not without reading the completed story. And that's not possible unless you write it. So the next time you want to ask someone if a novel should be written in epistolary format, skip the question and just do it. The worst that could happen is you finish the novel and find out that it's not working. And usually if something's not working, you're going to realize it in the first couple of chapters.
Read more

Loner Main Characters the Norm?

When I was typing up the back summary for PERSONAL DEMONS, a question popped into my head. Why are almost all main characters loners? Think about it. Most of them only have one or two friends at most. They don't involve themselves in a lot of activities. They don't have a lot of dates. They don't run around texting twenty people at once, or even a few. Is that to cut down on the number of characters that have to have a purpose? Is it to keep the story from getting too bogged down in unnecessary day-to-day activities? But the truth is, a lot of teenagers aren't like that. Teenagers don't just have one or two friends. They might have a few best friends and then a long list of extended friends and acquaintances. A lot of teenagers go out on dates, good ones and bad ones. They flirt, they fight, they date, they make new friends and enemies. It's all part of the teen experience. So, where is it in books? Am I just reading the ones with loner main characters (which se...
Read more

He Said, She Said: Dialogue Writing Tips

Dialogue is a tricky thing to get right, but it often takes up a good-sized portion of every book. Dialogue can bring two characters closer together, drive them further apart, reveal important information, and display any number of things. Use double quotation marks to open and close each line of dialogue. If there's a dialogue tag (said, asked, responded, quipped), use a comma, unless the dialogue requires an exclamation or question mark. If there isn't a dialogue tag, then there should be a period, unless it needs an exclamation or question mark. Beware of using an excessive amount of exclamation marks. If there's a lot of tension in a scene, the dialogue and actions of the characters should exhibit that. Also, there should be a new paragraph for each new speaker. When writing dialogue, keep the character in mind. Take their age, schooling, background, and who they are talking to into consideration. People talk differently to their friends than they do to their pare...
Read more